Author’s new book an ode to returning to Sullivan’s Island

By Jennifer Tuohy, Island Eye News Editor

Photos by Steve Rosamilia

When Dorothea Benton Frank talks to you—whether face to face, while you sit in a crowd of adoring fans, or as you read one of her books—you feel like she’s your best friend. But not just any best friend. She is that best friend. The one you’ve always wanted; fun, vivacious, kind and above all, side-splittingly funny.

Her wit is worthy of a standup comedy routine, but in its home on the pages of her novels it is free to run rampant, losing only that gorgeous Southern drawl in translation.

The 64-year-old Sullivan’s Island native has made a career out of that wit, writing about the pluses and pitfalls of life in the South, specifically life in South Carolina, even more specifically life on Sullivan’s Island. There’s no shortage of material. The author of 17 books over a career that started in her early 40s.